"We are always in a rhetoric"

A response to my history and theory of rhetoric homework. I really like the self-definiton of myself as a rhetor--and the rhetoric I carry with me--at the bottom.

We’re always standing somewhere as we speak, already inventing in the ways that we can, already in an ideology that is already constructing a rhetoric that is already constructing an ideology, already serving imperatives that generate the ways in which we will invent, dispose, and state. –Corder, page 99

Corder makes me think of a baby’s first word. My mother isn’t sure of my first word, but I did speak before my older brother, Brett. Mom thinks my first word was “Brett.” I remember the celebration when my youngest cousin said something like his first word—“ball.” I watch home movies and see my sister and I interacting, I am dancing around in a pink tutu singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas” while my sister wears a red dress and crawls around on the floor being my pet lion. From this, my mother decided to put me in dance classes and voice lessons and found opportunities for my sister to job shadow anyone that had anything to do with animals. We can’t help being in rhetoric—it’s as natural and involuntary as breathing. People learn to communicate even before we can even speak—baby’s crying for example. When we learn speech, our communications grow from basic needs to complex emotions and ideas. Even in our play, we communicate what type of person we are and our parents can choose a route of nurturing from our cues.
What rhetorics do I carry around with me? I carry the South Dakota farm girl rhetoric, where I wear a t-shirt, jeans, no shoes and ponytail everyday—dressing up is a pair of jeans with no holes, my hair down, a “nice” t-shirt and non-tennis shoes. I carry around the rhetoric of an academic: using words automatically in everyday speech that my family members don’t understand and having conversations with roommates about post-modernity and how to relate to a post-modern generation within the church. I carry around the rhetoric of a thespian, devoting much time and energy to studying all aspects of story and different ways to present stories to others, how to get them from the page to the stage. I carry around the rhetoric of a Christian, praying out loud when I’m nervous or scared or worried, not carrying who hears me. I carry around the rhetoric of a college student, always having a book with me and scheduling every second of my day for optimum efficiency, then procrastinating it all. I carry around the rhetoric of a close friend, dealing with the tough stuff of life—family members moving, breaking up, wondering what God wants—alongside my friends, supporting each other. I carry around the rhetoric of a caregiver, always making sure other’s basic needs are met before I consider my own. I carry around the rhetoric of a writer and reader of books, communicating best through written word. I carry around the rhetoric of an artist, communicating pictures of costumes in my head to a director through drawings.